One
Katydid is having a birthday vacation this week. Every year about this time her father has to make a trip to Omaha. This is why. The last time the meeting took place on Katydid's birthday, we lived in St. Louis. Katydid was turning five. We decided to make it a family vacation. I remember being very impressed with myself that I took a seven year old, a five year old, and a one year old to the zoo all by myself. This year, unfortunately, we can't drive to Omaha. So Andy decided to take Katydid with him instead. All reports indicate that she is having a great time. She's keeping a travel journal, taking lots of pictures at the zoo, and generally reveling in the fact that she gets to do things like take escalators and moving sidewalks, which we can't do with a fleet of strollers. (And, yes, Katydid will be attending the stockholder's meeting on Saturday. She's bringing a lot of books.)
Two
The Omaha Zoo, by the way, is awesome. Whenever I tell people that the Omaha Zoo is awesome they usually look at me funny until I say, "Mutual of Omaha? Wild Kingdom? Remember?" (Actually, Wild Kingdom is on the air again. According to the website, you can watch full episodes on YouTube if you miss them on Animal Planet.) The Desert Dome is probably the most unique exhibit, but their aquarium is top-notch, too, and taking the steam train around the zoo with the prairie dogs popping up beside the track? Pretty cool stuff.
Three
As you might imagine, I have been thinking about the value of travel in education quite a bit lately. It first struck me when I was standing in the library, in the children's non-fiction section, and I happened to find myself eye-level with all the tall grass prairie books. It was like being ambushed. When we lived in St. Louis, we used to visit a small island of tall-grass prairie, maintained in the rolling hills southwest of town. What I remember most is a visit in September, the yellow stems of grass waving above our heads, woven through with goldenrod and sunflower. It was hot and dusty and the sun was the same color as the grass. The monarchs had begun their migration, and there were hundreds of butterflies flitting from flower to flower. I was pregnant with Farmerboy, just a little sick, and very thankful that the buffalo hotdog stayed down so I could enjoy the day. Remembering that day while standing over a thousand miles away in a tiny library in upstate New York, it hit me, Most of the kids who read these books will never see a tall-grass prairie. The thought made me more than a little sad. But it also brought some satisfaction, because I knew at that moment that all the traveling we do is worth it. All the experiences of traveling may be hard to distill into educationese for the quarterly report (and many of them are just hard, period), but they are formative. For me, too.
Four
However, living in a house full of boys without the presence of even one girl requires some adjustment. It's like living inside the Military Channel.
Five
Actually, the boys have been following Farmerboy's lead over the past week and have become obsessed with all things dinosaur. Gareth had his dinosaur obsession when he was about seven or eight, and second grade is still fondly remembered as the year when we did dinosaurs, and nothing but. (Actually, Katydid reminded me the other day that we did a little ancient history at the beginning of that year, before it turned into the Year of the Dinosaur.) Needless to say, we have A LOT of dinosaur books, videos, etc. Gareth even did dinosaur math. (It was the only way I could get him to do math, period. So I wrote booklets full of dinosaur word problems. He wasn't reading well either, so I would make up dinosaur stories and write them line by line on a blackboard for him to read.)
Six
The big kids are going to be doing "end-of-the-year" projects this year as we wrap up the official school year in May and June. Really, all this means is that I want them to gather up what they've been doing all year into a product... which is by no means final, really... more like a stop along the way. The process of deciding on these projects went like this. I started thinking about activities they'd been doing on their own that had lasted for a long time. In Gareth's case, he's been drawing and writing about his invented planet for a long time, and Katydid's nature photography is an abiding interest for her (as long time readers can attest). So I suggested that they pull these together into books. This suggestion was met with approval -- excitement, even. Hopefully, we'll be able to pull it off. Stay tuned.
Seven
As you might expect, we were asked a lot of questions on our travels about our homeschooling practices. What is an average day like? (Average??) Do we use a boxed curriculum? (No.) How do we manage to take off entire months during the "school" year? Will we do school into the summer?
The answer to that last question is that I don't consider our trips all vacation. We go to the zoo, to nature centers, to botanical gardens, to museums, to historical sites, to state and national parks... etc., etc. They're more like field trips. And do you know how many books a kid can read when he (or she) is stuck in the car for 20 hours?? So, while our trips do mean that we don't do our regular workbook routine, and while I do count SOME days off, I can actually count many days as present. And so, officially, we have a little less than 20 days left to log in our school year. In our relaxed fashion, we'll go through May and part of June... and this year, I am taking July OFF. Or, well, as "off" as we get. ;-)
I saw your question on the 4Real Forum. Im not a member there so I couldn't comment. I saw that you decided that a closet would be the best place in your home. We found that the closet worked best for us as well. We ended up moving the dress up closet to a bigger closet with shelving. I only posted one picture of our dress-up closet. But, I'm sure you'll notice we are big fans of hooks.
http://ourtotallyawesomeblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/blog-post.html
Posted by: Kristi | May 03, 2009 at 08:15 PM